This invention relates to a swimmer training aid for enclosing a swimmer's fist.
Swimming authorities generally agree that the most talented swimmers have an acute sensory perception which enables them to "feel" and effectively handle the water better than the swimmers of average ability. This feel for the water is defined as the swimmer's ability to evaluate the pressure of the water on the palm of the hand. For example, the swimmer needs to evaluate how much pressure there is and from which direction it is coming, as the swimmer pushes and pulls the hands through the water. Evaluating this pressure tells the swimmer how fast the hand should be accelerating or decelerating and how to adjust the pitch of the hand as it travels through the water. The best swimmers have the best feel for the water and make the most efficient evaluations of the water pressure. Consequently, swim coaches use various training aids and techniques to enhance a swimmer's feel for the water, including use of the technique called fist swimming.
When fist swimming, the swimmer reduces the surface area of the hands by clenching the hands into fists in order to develop the feel of pulling not only with the hands, but also with the forearms. To swim efficiently with such a major reduction in effective pulling surface area requires the swimmer to focus his or her undivided attention on the act of swimming.
In addition, when swimming with the hands closed into fists, the swimmer's sensory receptors which are sensitive to pressure and which are located in the palm adapt to the pressure of the fingertips pressing into the palm rather than to the pressure of the water. When this fingertip pressure to the palms is removed by the swimmer unclenching the fists, the swimmer's palms and fingertips are particularly sensitive to the pressure of the moving flow of the water. This resulting heightened awareness of the swimming environment is interpreted as a dramatic feel for the water that has been compared by a swimmer to "having a pair of paddles welded to my wrists."
However, the act of consciously clenching the hand into a fist while swimming causes the swimmer to lose the fluid motion of the stroke and results in the early onset of fatigue of the hand and forearm muscles. Thus, swimmers can swim only short distances with their hands clenched into fists, although the longer the fist swimming drill, the more profound and long lasting the effects of the drill.
Previous methods for keeping the hands closed into fists include taping the clenched hands with duct tape, and placing each hand in a plastic bag and taping the bag in place. Neither of these methods involving tape can be employed quickly or independently by the swimmer. Nor is the tape, or bag and tape, practically reusable, since the tape must be cut or will otherwise effectively be destroyed in order to remove it from the hand.
A previously known fist enclosure is constructed from sewn-together pieces of rip-stop nylon and includes a hole through which the thumb projects. Hook-and-loop fastener material is attached adjacent a wrist opening for fastening the enclosure on the hand. However, such an enclosure is not easy to get off and on the hand, and it is not possible to keep water from pooling in the enclosure. The pooled water tends to distract the swimmer, reducing or destroying the beneficial effect of the device.
None of the known hand enclosures can retain the fingers in a flexed position with fingertips adjacent to the palm without the conscious effort of the swimmer to form a fist, because, if these known enclosures are large enough to fit over the fist, they do not enclose the fingers snugly enough, leaving room for the fingers to open and uncurl. Thus, none of the known hand enclosures provides an easily reusable snug enclosure for a swimmer's fist which maintains the position of the swimmer's fingertips adjacent the palm, thus enabling the swimmer to derive maximum benefits from a fist swimming drill.
What is still needed, then, is a covering for the hand which will press the curled fingertips into the palm when the hand is enclosed and which is also readily installed on and removed from the hand by the swimmer.